It’s Fri-YAY!! 🤗

This week’s Friday 56 and First Lines Friday comes from historical novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Hosted by Freda’s Voice, the Friday 56 is a weekly bookish prompt. It’s quite easy to do and could cover no end of different books and genres so seems great if you’re looking for a quick snippet to discover something new!

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that’s ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post here in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It’s that simple.

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A conversation between me and Wolf Hall from 2009:

Me: I really didn’t like the last (and only) Mantel book I read…
Wolf Hall: But I won’t be like Beyond Black, I promise, buy me!
Me: You are pretty hefty at over 650 pages…
Wolf Hall: But I’m all about the Tudors, your favourite history period… buy me buy me!
Me: I don’t think I’ll ever find the time to read you.
Wolf Hall: But I won the Man Booker Prize and my sequel Bring Up the Bodies did too… That’s TWO MAN BOOKERS! Buy me buy me buy me!!
*buys both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies*

Years later – Present Day…
Wolf Hall: [whispers enticingly from the shelf] You still haven’t read me yet, I’ve even been a TV series that you haven’t watched either… It’s not like you can go out and see all of your friends right now, I’ll be the perfect lockdown companion…

So that’s the story of how I finally got round to reading Wolf Hall. I don’t know why but I always feel a sense of achievement when I read something that has won a prestigious award or prize. I have a Biblioshelf Musings about Wolf Hall coming up next Wednesday so watch this space, but for now here are the First Lines Friday and Friday 56!

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First Lines Friday:

‘So now get up.’
Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.

Friday 56:

The cardinal closes his eyes. Tears are seeping from beneath his lids. ‘For it is a truth,’ says Cavendish, ‘that fortune is inconstant, fickle and mutable …’

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As I said, my review for this is coming up on Wednesday and I cannot tell you how much I admire this book. It is my latest 5 star read and it totally makes sense to me how this ended up winning the Man Booker!

Have you read Wolf Hall? Do you enjoy Historical Fiction? As always, drop me a comment to chat and feel free to leave your Friday 56 or First Line Friday links below so I can swing by!

Happy weekend everyone!
T xx